The Voice of Courage-Singer Ana Maria
Ugarte Refuses to Let her Blindness Cloud a Promising Career

by Azell Murphy Cavaan

Ana Maria
Ugarte

From the Editor:
The following story appeared in the November 20, 2000, edition of the Boston
Herald. Ana Ugarte is a 1996 NFB Scholarship winner and a Past President
of the National Association of Blind Students. Here it is:

A hush fell over the
performance hall, and Ana Maria Ugarte, an up-and-coming mezzo-soprano, took
her place beside the baby grand piano, smiled at her audience, and felt their
energy. But she couldn't see their faces.

Still, like every
other day in Ugarte's life, her blindness was the last thing on her mind. This
was her night. And it was her time to sing. Costumed in a black crushed-velvet
evening gown, the twenty-nine-year-old took a deep breath and let loose a wall
of sound so rich and full that it rolled through the air and hung there like
a cloud.

"I believe my
voice is a gift, and when I sing, it comes from deep within my soul,"
Ugarte said following her benefit recital for the National Federation of the
Blind at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge last week.

"For me music
is close enough to being the air that I breathe." Indeed, singing has
been the force behind Ugarte's indomitable spirit since she was five and heard
her first opera in her hometown of Portland, Oregon.

"She fell asleep
during the performance," recalled Angela Ugarte, Ana Maria's mother. "But
she kept waking up to catch a glimpse and she'd tap my leg and whisper to me
that's what she wanted to do when she grew up."

Her sights set on
becoming a star opera singer, the young Ugarte joined every church and children's
choir she could find. As it turned out, she was a natural whose talent often
propelled her to leading roles and coveted solo performances. She thrived on
the spotlight.

But by the age of eleven
Ugarte started experiencing strange bouts of blurred vision. Over the years
it grew progressively worse. "My parents knew I wasn't making it up,"
said Ugarte, who earned a graduate diploma in vocal performance from the New
England Conservatory of Music in 1998.

"They knew I was
far too vain to feign anything that would make me stand out as different. The
last thing I wanted to be was weird."

By the time Ugarte
was fifteen, a rare disorder called Stargardt's Disease had snatched most of
her vision away. A disease that causes blindness in about 25,000 young Americans
(it usually develops between the ages of seven and twelve), Stargardt's is
an inherited form of macular degeneration, which damages the part of the eye
that is responsible for sharp, frontal vision.

Ugarte describes the
images that her beautiful hazel-colored eyes lay before her as "a big
blurry mess." But that's not how she sees the world.

"Some people consider
blindness a tragedy, and I admit that I used to think that way," she said.
"But I've learned to reduce being blind to a mere nuisance." It's
a credo Ugarte says she learned from the National Federation of the Blind,
the largest help group for the blind that is run by blind people.

But it took Ugarte
ten years to find that inner peace. "(Before connecting with the National
Federation of the Blind), I had mastered the art of deception," Ugarte
said of her years at Portland State University, where she majored in music.
"I memorized the campus. I knew how to get around. Only my close friends
and my professors knew I was blind."

It wasn't until Ugarte
graduated college that she finally took her mother's advice and contacted the
Federation for the first time. "As they say, it was the first day of the
rest of my life," Ugarte said.

About a week after
her initial contact with the organization, Ugarte packed her bags and left
her hometown to start a nine-month program in Denver. The goal: learning how
to live as a blind person. "It was the first time in all my life that
music wasn't my focus and the first time I accepted the fact that I was blind,"
she said.

But acceptance never
meant submission for Ugarte, who today is a full-time musician. The fact that
she cannot see is nothing more than a sidebar--something that even those who
know her well sometimes forget about. "Her blindness is like the fact
that her hair is brown," said Amy Dethman, a close friend for more than
twenty years.

A positive attitude,
an appreciation for small victories, and an unwavering commitment to polishing
"her product" are the tools Ugarte says will one day steer her to
stardom. "I know I can do it," she said. "I don't want to become
famous because I'm a blind opera singer; I want to become famous because I'm
a good opera singer."

So she will be, her
mentors predict. "We've never--not even once--talked about her being blind,"
said Edward Zambara, the music teacher Ugarte has worked with for nearly two
years. "She's so very talented and has everything it takes to have a career
in opera, and that's all I see when I work with Ana."

Accompanied by her
coach and pianist Scott Nicholas during her recital last week, Ugarte performed
songs by Schubert, Copland, Weill, de Falla, and Guastavion.